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trinityperspectives.com.au

Win Loss Analysis FAQs

What is Win Loss Analysis?

Win Loss Analysis is a mechanism to gain a better understanding of why you’re winning and losing the business you pitch for. We speak directly with your customers and prospects, extracting specific, actionable and unbiased feedback about your sales team’s performance in recent competitive sales opportunities.

Win Loss Analysis also helps to:

• Identify the best practices of top performers in your business • Highlight how well you performed against the competition in each opportunity • Recognise which aspects of your products, people and pitch really resonated with your customers.

_________________________________________________________________________________________ trinityperspectives.com.au

M: +61 437 375 987 E: cian@trinityperspectives.com.au

What benefits can you expect from implementing a Win Loss Analysis program?

Taking the time to analyse your winning and losing deals can uncover areas of weakness and missed opportunities in your sales process, plus areas of strength or differentiation you were unaware of. It can also help expose gaps in your competitors’ strategies and attractive niches in your target markets. Areas where Trinity customers have seen immediate value from Win Loss Analysis include: • Improving individual and company-wide competitive win ratios • Helping reduce their cost of sale and sales cycle duration (quicker close rates) • Increasing revenue growth and market share • Discovering the reasons for lost opportunities • Increasing their competitive advantage • Uncovering sales training and enablement needs • Growing the volume of pipeline and increasing referral business.

Why use a third party to capture Win Loss information?

Asking for and receiving feedback can be awkward at the best of times, even more so when you’ve built a relationship with a prospective customer during a lengthy sales cycle. The value of an independent 3rd party is that we create an environment where it’s easy and comfortable for your customer to provide candid and honest feedback.

As an independent third party, the team at Trinity Perspectives has another advantage, we don’t simply provide you with this customer feedback in isolation. We use our decades of B2B sales expertise to provide specific and actionable recommendations based on the feedback provided and then work with you to implement these learnings into your business.

How many Win Loss Reviews should we conduct?

Whether your sales activities focus on a low volume of high value transactions or a high volume of lower value transactions, will usually determine the number of Win and Loss Reviews that we will conduct on your behalf. Each customer interview and survey provides a wealth of customer insight and competitive intelligence. The real value however comes in aggregating the feedback of many customers, observing similar themes or insights in key areas of your business and then taking action accordingly.

Our standard Win Loss Program operates over a 12 month period, with an agreed number of customer reviews conducted on a quarterly basis. However, some vendors like to ramp up the number of reviews being conducted to coincide with a new product launch or strategic initiative within their business.

Whose feedback goes into a Win Loss report?

The primary purpose for conducting Win or Loss reviews is to understand the buying experience through the eyes of your customers. On that basis we will always try and interview one or more of the key decision makers in any review that we conduct. In terms of the roles and responsibilities of these individuals, they vary from senior managers and C-suite executives, to business users, procurement team members and on occasion external 3rd party providers who have assisted with the decision-making process.

On the vendor side, we also like to extract some feedback from the sales leads on the opportunity, which in some instances can include sales, pre-sales, legal or senior management involvement. By focusing on the intersection of the sales process and buying process and combining both customer and vendor feedback, we are able to create a 360 degree view of what actually took place.

_________________________________________________________________________________________ trinityperspectives.com.au

M: +61 437 375 987 E: cian@trinityperspectives.com.au

What questions do you ask?

Over the past 6 years, the team at Trinity has developed and refined our Win Loss question library. We typically find that our question library provides between 75-80% of the interview questions you will need, which we then further refine in consultation with you, to ensure the reviews deliver on your specific research objectives.

What areas/topics do you focus on when creating the initial interview question set?

We believe that Win Loss Analysis is the fastest and most effective mechanism to identify gaps in your current sales process and learn exactly what you need to do to plug them. Some of the areas we focus on, when interviewing your customers include:

Clarity of value proposition - Whether the story your team is telling resonates with your target audience and triggers the right responses and behaviours.

Needs analysis and discovery - Both areas are critical in most sales processes and in the decision-making criteria of customers. Whichever vendor does this best, invariably develops the most compelling pitch and will more than likely win the deal.

Competitive insights - A consistent line of competitive questions in all reviews is an important step. It allows you to assess your strengths and weaknesses from your customer’s perspective, relative to your industry peers.

Functional knowledge - These questions should focus on how knowledgeable your sales team is, not just about your own solution, but also about their industry.

Technical knowledge - How knowledgeable is the sales team about your own technology, what it can deliver, its flexibility, different options, future enhancements, product direction.

Solution demo/presentations - How customers responded when you showed them your solution or presented them with a proposal, plus how you compare to your competition.

Quality of proposal - When you reach proposal stage, are your proposals compelling, was the customer surprised or confused by any element, did it reflect their needs, did it demonstrate your team’s ability to meet/exceed their expectations.

Pricing - In terms of its importance in your client’s decision-making process and also the structure of the pricing model being proposed by your sales team. A critical decision factor in many purchases, but rarely the deciding factor.

How and when should we ask customers to participate in the review process?

Ideally you should ask customers early on in the sales engagement. This increases a customer’s willingness to say yes and also provides a positive impression of you and your company in the eyes of the customer. However even after the sales cycle has concluded, most customers will be willing to participate in a debrief of this nature assuming they understand:

How much of their time it will take (A maximum of 45 minutes to an hour for face-to-face or video interviews, including a short online survey. A maximum of 15 minutes for survey only participants)

What you are intending to do with the information they provide (eg use it as a mechanism to improve our business, deliver a better service to future customers, better train or enable our salespeople, spread positive behaviours across the business and eradicate negative behaviours)

_________________________________________________________________________________________ trinityperspectives.com.au

M: +61 437 375 987 E: cian@trinityperspectives.com.au

What you are not going to do with it (eg use it as a mechanism to try and get back into a lost sales process, use it as a way to cast doubt on a customer’s buying process or approach, blame or punish an individual or team based on a piece of feedback received from a customer)

You can raise the concept of Win Loss with your customer during a face-to-face meeting, over the phone or via email, whichever you judge to be most appropriate.

What is the process?

Customers will be divided into two groups. Your sales management team will work with you to determine which customers should participate in these reviews on a deal by deal basis.

Group one: For larger or more strategic deals, customers will undertake a 1:1 interview (either face-to-face or remote) and they will also respond to an online survey (approximately 45 minutes to an hour in total)

Group two: For smaller, more transactional deals, customers will only be asked to complete the online Win Loss Analysis survey (approximately 15 minutes in total).

Who is Trinity Perspectives and why should I work with you?

Trinity Perspectives is the leading Win Loss Analysis company in the ANZ region. Our team combines decades of B2B sales and sales transformation expertise, with a strong commitment to helping businesses better understand why they win and lose the deals they pitch for.

Founded in 2011, Trinity is committed to bridging the communication gap between vendors and the customers they serve and helping our clients harness the power of their customer insights.

To find out more about Trinity, head to www.trinityperspectives.com.au.